


Duane Barry

by leiascully



Series: The FBI's Most Unwanted [31]
Category: The X-Files
Genre: Canon-Typical Violence, Episode Related, Gen
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2015-08-02
Updated: 2015-08-02
Packaged: 2018-04-12 13:09:10
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,566
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/4480337
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/leiascully/pseuds/leiascully
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>In the thick of things, he still looked for her.</p>
            </blockquote>





	Duane Barry

**Author's Note:**

> Timeline: 2.05 "Duane Barry"  
> A/N: "Duane Barry" was the first episode I ever saw and I have so many feelings about it.  
> Disclaimer: _The X-Files_ and all related characters are the property of Chris Carter, 1013 Productions, and Fox Studios. No profit is made from this work and no infringement is intended.

Scully turned on the television and was only half-surprised to see Mulder in the thick of things. The FBI rumor mill was robust, and nothing brought Mulder to the scene faster than murmurs of UFOs, or so the snide remarked. She still got sideways glances in the bullpen, though she and Mr. Spooky were officially separated. She was certain there were rumors about that as well. Romeo and Juliet dragged back to their respective houses before anybody did anything rash, maybe, or something even more convoluted. It was a mystery why she hadn't heard any of it, really, but one she felt comfortable leaving uninvestigated. 

She picked up the phone, knowing it would be Mulder. In the thick of things, he still looked for her. Less Romeo and Juliet, she thought with passing scorn, and more unearthly Holmes and grounded Watson. 

"Look, Scully, I need your help," he said, and a few words later, she lost him. On the screen, the lights in the buildings had gone out. The reporters cut back to the studio.

She sat at home and did the work, because it was all she could do. Either Mulder would call her back to say that everything was all right or she would drive to Virginia and bluff and shout her way in the way she had at Ellens Air Force Base, and no one would stop her until she was certain he was safe, hale, and whole. Either way, she needed information. She booted up the computer. 

Duane Barry. Former FBI. Shot in the line of duty. She delved deeper into his records in the official database. His medical records were there, presumably because they'd led to his discharge. She didn't stop to question her access; in the moment, the sanctity of confidentiality was superseded. Mulder was in the dark, literally and metaphorically, and only she could illuminate his situation. Duane Barry was not who he seemed to be. He would slip under Mulder's radar, skew the profile. Duane Barry was a trap baited with all the right things, and eventually he would snap, and Mulder was in harm's way.

She picked up the phone and called Mulder's phone, snapping at the person who answered, snapping at Krycek. She didn't trust Krycek, didn't trust anyone else with Mulder's life. She hung up and grabbed her keys and her printouts. A drive and a flight later and she was striding into the office, stalking past Krycek, shaking her papers in Kazdin's face until someone would let her speak to Mulder.

Mulder. She had one blessed moment of relaxation when she heard his voice, but Duane Barry spoke and she was thrumming with tension again, a wire strung tight enough to slice through anything that impeded her. Mulder was trapped in a room with a man with no conscience; no gun, no backup, no skeptic to keep him from following Barry over the edge during his flights of fancy. Her urgency gritted between her teeth and made the bones of her face buzz. Agents walked around her and she barely registered their presence. Mulder was her priority. Mulder was the only thing. She would shoot Duane Barry herself if they gave her the chance, but her best chance was to keep them talking. The sound of her voice might break the thrall, might bind Mulder to her reality instead of Barry's.

The sniper positioned himself. Her eyes followed the beam of the laser sight as if she could pin Barry to the wall with nothing but her stare. Mulder Mulder Mulder, chanted her heart, and she clenched her fists until her nails bit into the ball of her thumb. Her body longed for a release from the tension; her toes curled in her shoes. Mulder imperiled made her limbic system hum. Her prefrontal cortex ceded control to the amygdala. If she could have punched the sudden crackle of static, she would have.

And then, for Duane Barry, the lights went out, and she had Mulder back. He wore a uniform that didn't belong to him and a Kevlar vest she silently thanked God for. His eyes looked glazed. She watched him from a careful distance, her heart still thudding, and he hung his dark head. Her fury ebbed, as if the shot that had brought Duane Barry down had spilled her desperation too, indelibly staining the carpet of the travel agency. 

His shoulder brushed hers as he walked away from the ambulance. She let him go. Mulder in the depths of guilt would fling himself against the limits of any restraint, even the gentle cage of her hands, and she would not see him wounded further. He would see, when his vision cleared, that they all bore this weight together.

\+ + + + 

It seemed mundane, even ridiculous, to be picking out ice cream when a man had nearly died, but life went on. Scully was weary; she could feel her blood sugar dropping as the adrenaline washed out of her system. She needed to eat something to steady herself. The warm glowing oasis of her kitchen was far removed from the dim room in Virginia with its funk of cheap coffee and fear. She piled food into her cart, made small talk with the clerk. An ordinary end to a grueling day. 

In the name of scientific inquiry, she ran the metal, shrapnel or chip or whatever it might be, over the scanner, and the machine beeped a frantic alert, numbers tumbling across the screen.

What was she carrying? The register was still rattling off numbers as she walked away briskly, carrying her groceries, the shard in its vial back in her pocket. This chip had been in a man's abdomen, one of various shards cached in his body. There was no happenstance to this. In his delusions, there might be some grain of truth. He had been a specimen, catalogued and categorized for some obfuscated purpose. She couldn't imagine who or what might have done that to him, who might have needed to tag a man like wildlife. 

Over the course of her career, she had interrogated and investigated hundreds of people, but she had gathered their information voluntarily. In medical school and at the academy, they had never assigned an identity to a person beyond what was evident from the testimony of their minds and bodies. They had charted symptoms and created profiles, but the confidentiality of their files seemed much less sinister. She and her colleagues were sworn to do no harm, to protect and serve. They could share their files within the limits of a confidentiality intended to shield the vulnerable. Duane Barry had been barcoded like merchandise, by someone with both the capability and the need to reduce a human to a series of encrypted references that others could not discern. Scully doubted the information on the chip was limited to his shoe size and drug allergies.

Violence had been done to this man by those he sought to bring to justice, but even more chilling was the specter of his catalogers. The way he had been marked suggested a cold indifference that gave her goosebumps. Even the doctors had not been able to remove all of the shards. Men and women had been marked before for ease of sorting and identification; the method was more sophisticated than it had been in the slave markets or the concentration camps, but the impersonal malice seemed in the same spirit. Duane Barry's whole life might be encoded in that chip: who he had been, what had become of him, what might be done with him and by whom. 

The thought that it might have easily been Mulder scanned and chipped like some expendable specimen froze her heart. Mulder had rushed in so often where angels feared to tread. He might have been the one jerking back in shock as a bullet changed his mind forever. He might have been the one sedated, studied, a scalpel poised above his face. He had no scar - she remembered the smooth expanse of his abdomen as he'd coughed and coughed after the fire in Boston - but she also remembered Idaho, when he had been captured by men with identities as insubstantial as shadows, and she knew he did not remember the hours he had spent under their control. 

She couldn't put the thing down. She had lost too much evidence to fires and liars; if she could hold it, she might keep it. With her other hand, she picked up the phone.

"Mulder, it's me," she told him, sounding her way through the mystery of it, as if his answering machine might reply to her past the canned response that prompted her to leave a message. Outside, a storm was brewing. Something thumped and scraped below her window: a branch, a cat, or maybe one of Mulder's things that went bump in the night. She twitched open the blinds to reassure herself of the mundanity of the world.

A flash. A face. A fist that smashed the glass. A half-familiar voice that growled at her. 

"I need your help!" she cried, as if Mulder could squeeze himself through the phone lines, as if he would not be utterly, utterly too late. Fear jolted through her body like lightning earthing itself; she was a fulgarite, brittle glass frozen by a moment beyond her control.

The lights went out.


End file.
